Wednesday, August 28, 2002

Recall plans fading as reality sinks in
By Paul Willcocks
VICTORIA - Recall is looking more and more like one of those ships that sink before they leave the dock.
There are some enthusiastic backers out there, anxious to send a message to the Liberals, and some ridings where work is already under way.
But the key individuals and organizations needed to make recall work - NDP supporters and unions - are backing away from the whole idea.
Recall doesn't come cheap. The people who launched the first recall effort against former NDP finance minister Paul Ramsey spent more than $35,000 on the campaign; his defenders spent about the same. Even a half-a-dozen serious efforts would cost around $250,000.
That's a big sum to raise, especially with no organization ready to foot the bills or take over the fund-raising. The union movement doesn't have the money and isn't convinced it would be well-spent. And New Democrats fear that donations to recall campaigns wil take away from the party's own fund-raising efforts. (Donors are already going to be facing plenty of pleas, with a federal election likely in late 2004 and a provincial vote in May 2005.)
That's not the New Democrats' only concern.
Many party members never did like the recall legislation. Former cabinet minister Corky Evans spoke for them this month when he wrote his hometown Nelson Daily News and argued against a recall effort aimed at Liberal MLA Blair Suffredine.
Recall is an "abomination," Evans said. "No individual, including our MLA, deserves that kind of character assassination in the guise of democratic activity." If an MLA does a poor job, voters can toss him out at the next election, Mr. Evans argues.
There are plenty of pragmatic concerns too.
To recall an MLA and force a byelection campaigners have to get signatures from 40 per cent of the eligible voters from the last election. That's 11,700 names in Suffredine's riding, more than half the people who actually voted last year, all to be gathered in 60 days. That's a huge challenge.
And if recall fails - the most likely outcome - some Liberal opponents worry the campaigners will have spent enthusiasm better saved until the general election.
NDP supporters see one major benefit to successful recall bids (although the party pledges to stay firmly on the sidelines). Two successful campaigns, followed by NDP byelection wins, would bring the party up to four seats, enough to guarantee official opposition status. That would mean an extra $150,000 a year for the caucus, allowing them to hire badly needed staff. And the new MLAs - especially ones without ties to the old government - would help share the daunting workload.
But before any of that can happen, not only does recall have to succeed but the NDP has to win the resulting byelections, and that's far from certain.
The Liberals could well retain the seats, given their popularity, people's discomfort with recall and the likelihood of a vote split on the left. An independent candidate could win, or even a high-profile Green Party candidate (likely the NDP's worst nightmare).
Add the negatives up, and recall looks like a dubious enterprise.
Recall bids can be launched 18 months after an election, meaning campaigns could start in November. But municipal elections are coming, preoccupying many activists, and then we're into holidays and winter. A realistic date is next spring - barely two years before the next election.
Some efforts will likely go ahead, with the ones driven by strong local issues likely to come closest to success. Suffredine is a potential target for Nelson residents angry about health care cuts; Val Roddick may draw fire from Delta voters angry about threats to hospital services; Jeff Bray, who barely won in Victoria-Beacon Hill, faces criticism over public service job cuts.
But it's unlikely that many serious campaigns will be launched, or that any will succeed.

Government cougar, wolf kill a bad idea
By Paul Willcocks
VICTORIA - When I moved to Vancouver Island I thought that it would be great to glimpse a cougar sometime, quietly pleased by the notion of sharing space with a serious predator.
Then I actually saw them at the Kamloops Game Farm, all muscles and teeth and attitude, more like lions than the overgrown housecat-sized lynx of Eastern Canada. They stared through the fence coolly, even contemptuously; I was barely there.
The keenness to see a cougar faded on the spot. But I still like knowing they are floating like ghosts through the wooded park down the road, or drifting silently through suburban backyards at dawn.
Environment Minister Joyce Murray is being asked to approve a government kill of cougars and wolves on Vancouver Island, so hunters can shoot more deer. Government biologists want to kill 120 wolves on the island over the next three years - about half the population - and an undetermined number of cougars. It's called wildlife management, killing one species so another one will do better.
Nothing wrong with wildlife management; we do it every time we approve a new building or set a hunting season. But a good starting point would be to acknowledge that eco-complexity and the lack of good information make it a difficult, unpredictable art.
The deer population is likely a cause for concern (though gardeners may disagree). There are some 55,000 deer on the Island now, about a quarter of the population of 20 years ago. Logging old-growth forests has taken away the shelter, and lichen, deer need. If the forests regenerate the deer will rebound, maybe.
Cougar and wolves haven't done well, either. Wolf populations have fallen roughly in line with the deer, to something between 150 and 250 today. The cougar population is down more sharply; at some 400 today, half as many as seven years ago.
The biologists' theory is that killing the predators will cause the deer populations to increase. Hunters will have more deer to shoot, and in the long-term the predators will recover and have more deer to eat.
Managing wildlife as a resource makes sense. A guide can charge up to $4,500 for a one-week hunt; many British Columbians enjoy hunting; saving one endangered species may mean culling another. There are occasions when we need to take the risk of intervening.
But the deer aren't endangered. The cougar and wolves are healthy, and despite the occasional dramatic case they aren't a threat to people. By my calculation you are 145 times more likely to be killed by your spouse than by a cougar in B.C.
The aim here is simply to manipulate nature by killing wolves and cougars, giving hunters more black-tailed deer to shoot. (For the record, I don't hunt, but I don't care if others do.)
That will - and should - be a tough sell. Many British Columbians won't be in favour of shooting or poisoning one animal to make it easier for hunters to kill another. They will know that only a few years ago provincial biologists suggested dogs were killing more deer than wolves.
And no offence, biologists, but we're not so comfortable with the risks of taking the wolf population down to 150 on this island, or confident of our ability to manage ecosystems we don't really understand.
Murray will probably reject the proposal. Killing predators that attack livestock is one thing. Shooting wolves and cougars a part of an uncertain plan to produce more deer for hunters another.
But if she is wavering, she should think about the impact of global news coverage of a government-sponsored cougar kill on Vancouver Island, the dogs running them down, the hunters shooting the treed cats. It will play very badly.
It won't play much better at home. If we're so good at wildlife management, where are the salmon?

Paul Willcocks can be reached at willcocks@ultranet.ca

Liberals weak on case for private highways
By Paul Willcocks
VICTORIA - The protesters who made life miserable for toll-booth workers on the Coquihalla Highway this month may be acting like self-indulgent yahoos. But their frustration with the Liberals' inability to make a coherent case for turning highways over to private companies is shared by a wide range of groups.
"Public-private partnerships," or P3s, are a hot concept for the Liberals, who tout them as a way to build and maintain everything from roads to hospitals to schools.
But what they haven't done is make an effective case for what could well be a good idea.
Transportation Minister Judith Reid released a discussion paper last month. But it's hopelessly vague, and devotes only three pages to basic questions about how private-public partnerships would work, and what the risks and benefits would be.
Reid's discussion paper promises lower costs, less debt, innovation, better use of assets and better risk management. But it's unclear on how those benefits will be achieved.
The starting point for Reid's paper is that the province needs $10 billion worth of road construction over the next decade. That's too much debt, the discussion paper suggests.
But handing the project - and future toll revenues - over to a private company doesn't change the reality. The company would have to borrow the money, at a higher interest rate than the government. And they will have to collect money from the same people the government would have tapped. It's as if you were worried your mortgage debt was too high and decided to sell your house to a developer and then lease it back at rent greater than your mortgage payments. The paper debt is gone, but your financial situation is unchanged.
Better risk management is also a questionable claim. The theory is that if hospital construction costs soar over budget, or drivers shun the toll road, then the private partner takes the hit. The reality is that private companies are frequently successful in getting more money from government when things go wrong.
There's a stronger argument for innovation. The simple step of opening the field up to competition means new ideas will emerge. Nova Scotia had more than 40 new schools built under a plan that let companies provide buildings and support services in return for lease payments and the chance to rent out the building in off-hours. (But the program has now been cancelled, with no takers for more projects.)
Considering how eager the government is to move forward, they have provided little useful information. That public debate has tended to be polarized and driven by interest groups like unions, which fear private companies will pay lower wages, and business groups anxious to cash in on the opportunities.
It's time for more information and analysis - and less blind enthusiasm - before the province rushes full speed into a privatization experiment.

Paul Willcocks can be reached at willcocks@ultranet.ca

Ottawa eerily silent on U.S. illegal operation in B.C.
By Paul Willcocks
VICTORIA - Maybe they just don't care up in Ottawa that U.S. agents feel free to enter Canada illegally, break our laws and then conceal the evidence from the courts here.
For a week I've been trying to get someone - anyone - in the federal government to describe Canada's response to a B.C. court ruling that U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency operatives knowingly broke our laws.
B.C Supreme Court Justice Janice Dillon found the Americans knowingly snuck into Canada, ran an illegal operation and then tried to conceal their activities from the court - a shocking abuse of Canadian law, she called it. "The illegal conduct is extremely offensive because of the violation of Canadian sovereignty without explanation or apology," she wrote.
Talking to the federal government from B.C. is generally like shouting down a long, hollow tube to a deaf man.
But Ottawa should have a response when a foreign government walks all over its police and laws, especially when that foreign government is seeking to have more and more of its agents operating in Canada.
Dillon was ruling on a U.S. bid to extradite Brent 'Dave' Licht to California to face cocaine charges, the end of a saga that wanders a long, winding path from the DEA office in Los Angeles to a White Rock pier.
The DEA plan originally targeted would-be Canadian cocaine importers. Two paid informants were told to pretend to be Colombian drug dealers in Los Angeles with lots of cocaine to sell. They found some interested buyers, and set off on a trail that led to Vancouver. They wanted to follow that trail across the border.
The rules governing a DEA operation in Canada are clear. A U.S.-Canada agreement requires the DEA to get RCMP consent. They also needed a special permit from the immigration minister because the undercover agent had a criminal record.
And they needed approval from the RCMP's top narcotics officer to pretend they had drugs for sale. The tactic is illegal in Canada except under tight controls, because of the risk of injustice. When police approach potential buyers, they may be creating a crime that would never have happened without their instigation
The Mounties said yes and the phoney dealer and his DEA handler came up. But his efforts bombed; no big drug dealers were discovered.
The DEA wanted to try again, but the RCMP said no. They had higher priorities.
The DEA seemed to accept the decision. But a month later one of the undercover agents entered Canada illegally, and ignoring our law and agreements signed by his country, tried to make a drug deal.
Eventually a pretend deal in California was arranged, with Licht. He wasn't there for the buy, so the U.S. set out to extradite him on conspiracy charges.
That's what led to Dillon's ruling. The Americans knowingly broke Canadian law and violated international agreements, she found. They conducted an illegal reverse sting operation. They tried to conceal the information from the court. And they never offered any explanation for the illegal acts. (This wasn't some fluke. Documents showed that the RCMP felt pressured to approve the first operation quickly, because they feared that the DEA would just go ahead illegally.)
I expected a run-around from American officials. But surely the Canadian government would have a response to the damaging findings.
But it took two days for a spokesman for Justice Minister Martin Cauchon to say he had no comment, although he was considering an appeal - on behalf of the Americans. After more than a week of calls, Solicitor General Lawrence MacAulay's staff still haven't explained whether the case is an aberration, whether it will affect future DEA activities in Canada, how many legal DEA operations are conducted in B.C. - or even whether they've asked the Americans for an accounting for the illegal acts.
Our law should matter more than that.